Month: January 2017

Capabilities?! Who Knows…

January 26, 2017 / starving entrepreneur

Before I get too deep into the entrepreneurship lessons I’ve learned over the years, I need to digress (read: vent for a minute about) into corporate America, for just a minute, as I’ve been here for all of 6 weeks now? I seriously haven’t had my third paycheck yet, and I already feel like I’m probably on some kind of watchlist… aaaaannnywaaaay… After 5 years of startup/entrepreneurial life, I just want to relish in how gloriously inefficient it all is. In the best way possible, of course. I’m certainly not denigrating corporate life. There is something inherently beautiful about the strange world of not connecting the dots, glaring inefficiencies, miscommunications, and bureaucracy that gives you more perks, better benefits and a retirement plan. I don’t know how to describe it other than a beautiful mess… So now for an anecdote.

So I’m in a “capabilities” meeting this week… But first a brief history on my capabilities background. . . Prior to working in corporate America, my only definition of “capability” was “WHAT CAN YOU DO? CAN YOU DO IT? YOU’RE CAPABLE!… IT’S YOUR CAPABILITY!”

Apparently, in corporate America, capabilities assessments are some kind of business model. Who knew?! So me being a naturally curious individual, I Google capabilities and there is a Google of information at my fingertips about the business process of capabilities. Guess what. . . I don’t read it because tl;dr and I’m a pretty quick girl, and I get the scholarly gist from what I skim and what my coworkers have told me. Lemme break it down…

Capabilities Assessment = What do I need to get my job done, matched with what can we do, matched with what’s already going on, matched with where we need to be… It’s basically a matrix. Got it.

That being said, I did some research on capabilities to get myself up to speed. It didn’t take me long before I found what seems to be the foremost capabilities thinkers in the business world. I read their papers (kinda), but I found their Twitter profiles, and anyway, now I need to tell my capabilities story…

So I’m in my weekly update meeting, and my team member has this interesting “case”… his job is to determine capabilities for the business, mind you. He brings up an instance of one group who has a specific need… after we’ve just had an entire conversation about the importance of enterprise architecture and how projects need to be more forward thinking. The interesting case he starts to talk about is for a group to create a reporting tool that pulls data from multiple different sources and creates an aggregated view in a digestible report on a regular basis. There is another project that has solved this exact problem, but for a different group…

My response, “Isn’t this exactly the same case as [we’ll call it XYZ project]?”

His answer, “no, it’s a different audience.”

Although from where I”m standing the requirements from a software perspective are exactly the same, but the inputs are different. So the end result is a report (we have multiple automated reporting tools)… and the data inputs are different (although there should probably be APIs or SDKs for what they want to accomplish)… but we have an automation team who solves these exact problems. He still deadpans in my direction and says, “but it’s a different audience.”

Well, yes, I realize it’s a different audience, and I realize the data inputs/outputs are different, but a reporting tool architecture, is a reporting tool architecture, is a reporting tool architecture… Isn’t this what capabilities is all about?! Am I wrong here?! Did I miss something?!

God bless corporate America.

I have another good story about corporate inefficiency in America…Clearly, I’m still mesmerized.

Why Can’t I Make Money?

January 24, 2017 / starving entrepreneur

Why can’t I make money?
Why do I feel like I am failing at life?
Why am I still not where I want to be?
Why do I feel like I keep spinning my tires and never going anywhere?

These were actual questions that I constantly asked myself, and I just couldn’t seem to get my shit together. Like could not get. my. shit. together. I didn’t bounce around from place to place. I wasn’t particularly unstable. I was just not reaching my full potential. And at the end of the day I have to go back to the mantra I used to repeat to myself when I would find myself pulling an all-nighter the night before a big test, or a big project was due. This is nobody’s fault but your own. Where you are now is a direct reflection of all the choices you’ve made. Live with the consequences, whatever those may be, and make better decisions next time.

“This is nobody’s fault but your own. Where you are now is a direct reflection of all the choices you’ve made. Live with the consequences, whatever those may be and make better decisions next time.”

– Me to Myself, talking myself out of self-pity and self-loathing

But really, every year for at least six years, I would have these random moments of clarity where I would look at my life, only to realize that I wasn’t where I wanted to be and I couldn’t figure it out. What needed to come first? I wasn’t particularly happy, and I wasn’t particularly unhappy, I was caught in this weird cycle of disappointment and non-achievement. I had so much potential, I know I did. I needed to take an inventory. I needed to take a deep breath, a step back, clean up, shape up, reevaluate, reassess, reprioritize.

The answer to most of these questions boils down to one key fact: Subconsciously I’m still comparing myself to others.

On the surface I like to think and say that I don’t care what other people think, but deep down that’s clearly a lie. We all care about what other people think. It’s like one of the most basic needs in being human, the need to feel accepted. Aside from freedom, thanks Westworld, it’s the need to feel belonging and acceptance. Intrinsic motivation because you’re being fulfilled somehow, and then outward measurable success that makes you feel validated in your pursuits. Comparison isn’t inherently all bad, it gives us a benchmark, but at the same time, it’s all just arbitrary.

The truth of the issue is who’s to say that I don’t have my shit together besides me? I pay my own bills, I feed myself, I feel like at this point in life I have a pretty good understanding of what I want and who I am. So what if I’m a late bloomer? I have so many ideas, so many talents, and so much time… Well, not so much time, but theres’ no law that says you can’t start when you want, and there’s no law that says you can’t take all the time you need, and there’s no law that says you have to be on anyone’s timeline but your own.

And the answer to the rest of the questions? Thinking vs. Doing.

This is the big one. I’m a thinker rather than a doer. It’s one of my greatest strengths, and it’s also one of my biggest weaknesses. I’ve written about it before. Almost a year ago, and in that time I feel like I haven’t really done anything. And technically I’ve done more than others and less than some, but again, it doesn’t really matter how it stacks up to everything else, as long as I’m happy and satisfied with the outcome. Conversely, I have done a lot, it just wasn’t enough, or more accurately it wasn’t enough for me.

And now that I am doing I have to be mindful. I have to make better decisions, and make better use of time. Plan and prioritize, become a slave to the habits that make you successful. I think this is probably one of the hardest and most valuable lessons I have learned over the past few years. I spent so much time trying to fight against routines, habits, convention, and rules and ending up living some shallow existence that’s the same kind of life as everyone else’s, that I missed the forest for the trees. When you develop good habits, and you become a slave to those habits, those habits are what will set you free, not what will be your chains.

Taking a Break from Entrepreneurship

January 3, 2017 / starving entrepreneur

Being an Entrepreneur is Not a Choice

Sure you can choose your career path and what you want to do in life, but I don’t think entrepreneurship is a choice. I think entrepreneurship is a part of an entrepreneur’s DNA. It’s a feeling deep within that requires that you listen to a voice. A voice that calls you be your own boss. A voice that constantly reminds you, you are the captain and need to be in control your own destiny. That you’ll never be successful or truly happy working in someone else’s shadow. However, sometimes the path is not clear. Sometimes the road to successful entrepreneurship is windy. Your career leads you in different directions, and it brings you down an unexpected path. Divergence in the path isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so much as it’s a different thing. Sometimes entrepreneurs just need a break in order to gain clarity and perspective— to learn more. There are a million reasons why 90% of new businesses fail as I’ve experienced many of them, and now I have the opportunity, motivation, and perspective to be able to write about my misadventures in entrepreneurship.

Going Corporate

I never thought I would go corporate. To me going corporate felt like going to the dark side, felt a lot like failing. A corporate job equated to oppression and working for the man, whoever that man may be. Additionally, many of the people I’ve come across in my professional endeavors told me that a corporate job wasn’t something I’d be suited for. Well due to serendipitous circumstances and my own stellar interviewing skills, I’ve recently landed a good corporate job that I’m genuinely excited about. I see it as one of the biggest learning opportunities of my career path. I’ve conceded to the idea that I like it. I’ve conceded to the fact that this position will be a good thing for me. I’ve conceded to the idea that if I truly want to achieve my goals I need to be able clearly define them and to see problems stopping me from all angles. Just like back in my studio classes when I was studying architecture. This is the part where you take the problem, flip it over and reverse it. Look at it from another angle. Stand on your head if you have to. That’s what I’m doing. I’m standing on my head. Doing a full 180, diving into the upside down into unfamiliar territory.

Leading up to this conversion, I found myself craving all of the things that I haven’t gotten by being in the world of entrepreneurship. A team for daily interaction and to bounce ideas off of (this concept will resurface later), management with clear ideas goals and metrics of success. The funny thing is, these are all things you need to be successful in entrepreneurship and as I write them I realize I probably should have exited my situation sooner, but I also believe everything happens for a reason, hindsight is 20/20, and mistakes are simply lessons learned to be turned into something better in the future.

Time to Refocus and Reflect

This project has been a labor of love for about eight years in my misadventures in entrepreneurship. I’ve been keeping notes, writing, digesting, learning. Full disclosure: I’m no millionaire… I called this blog “Starving Entrepreneur” for good reason. I can’t teach you to be rich, and I don’t purport to know anything more than you, in fact, the more I learn, the more I learn the less I know. All I want to do is share my experiences in the hopes that if you are building a business of your own, you can avoid the mistakes and missteps I’ve encountered, to minimize the bad habits and to maximize the success. The goal is that this blog will last for one year with new posts appearing at the beginning of each week. A lot of content is stuff that’s already been written that I now need to edit and make into cohesive, thoughtful pieces.

I’m using this time in my new position to refocus and reflect. What do I really want to get out of my life? What is the career path that I’m really supposed to be going down? How do my experience, education, and passion all fit together with my love of entrepreneurship? What about my ability to make money and support myself? Is entrepreneurship really the right thing for me? How could I possibly know if it’s the only thing I’ve ever really known?

At the very least I want to stay hungry for success, and I shouldn’t let failure of any kind get me down. Failure is essential for growth and success.